How To Get Travelers' Insurance in Egypt

In 1864, Travel Insurance was invented by James G. Batterson when he founded the world’s first travel insurance agency “The Travelers Insurance Company” with the object of insuring travelers by railway or steam boat against loss of life and personal injury. Since then the concept has highly developed to cover a lot of aspects and details related to travel risks.

Today, Travel Insurance concept is becoming more and more required in Egypt after becoming a "MUST DO" for some touristic aspect.

For Travel Insurance you have to differentiate between 2 things:

1) Traveling totally on your own responsibility; which means you buy the ticket, reserve the hotel and do the rest of travel itineraries and arrangements totally on your own, without the need of any travel agency.

2) Traveling through a travel agency; by either selecting one of their vacation packages or by asking them to arrange a customized leisure or business program according to the traveler needs.

Below are the different possibilities in each case:

1)When someone travel on his/her own responsibility there are 3 possibilities:1.a.From Egypt towards an International Destination:
Here it all depends on the embassy requirements in order to give you their country VISA. For some countries, mostly Europe, USA and other few countries, it is a must to have a pre-VISA application insurance with the duration of your travel or a yearly renewed insurance that covers any health and accident problems during the period of travel to their countries (I believe this practice became a must in Europe starting mid or late 90ies, before that it was only optional after realizing that most tourists coming from outside Europe and USA don’t usually have personal insurance of any sort even in their own countries).

1.

b.From International Destination towards another International one:
As the medical care is usually expensive on most people residing Europe and the USA, most people have health insurance by default at least on the local level, I am not sure how its system function outside their own country or even outside the continent (for ex if a European resident traveling to USA or vise versa).

1.c.From an International Destination towards an Egyptian one or local travel inside Egypt:
Foreigners traveling to Egypt on their own or locals residing Egypt for a long period, travel insurance inside Egypt becomes their own responsibility totally or the responsibility of the firm they work in if they are here for work as I have never heard that the Egyptian Embassy require any sort of Pre-VISA insurance from foreigners. Some insurance companies abroad are internationally recognized or have affiliates here (same as the banking system) while others are only local within their country of origin…

2)When someone travel through a travel agency there are 3 possibilities:

2.a.From Egypt towards an International Destination:
Most Travel agencies, specially the big names, include insurance in their travel packages as a must do requirement, sometimes even when traveling to other Arab countries, and this basically to avoid any unnecessary problems for their company during the trip.

2.b.From International Destination towards another International one:
No clue, it depends on the regulations of the country you are traveling from.

2.c.From an International Destination towards Egypt or local travel inside Egypt: What most companies do, they insure their buses, coaches, cars, airplanes and any other medium of transportation including its passengers. But if we discuss a case of a tourist injuring himself during the tour (for example while taking a camel or horse back ride in the pyramids), here it the isurance becomes the choice of the traveler, some Egyptian companies offer this insurance for extra fees or the traveler can have his own international insurance like the one we do when we travel to Europe or USA or through the corresponding travel agency abroad.

2) AIG - http://www.aig.com/Travel-Insurance_260_77292.html
The most famous one in Egypt, they say they cover 130 countries, couldn't find the list of countries on the website, I guess you need to contact them to check if the country you travel to is included or not.

One important thing to note and that is very relative to SS and help in the evaluation and choice of company is to make sure of what type of travel accidents they cover...

For example, checking if they cover adventure travel and extreme sports or not (Safaris, Rally, Ski, Rafting, Mountaineering, etc...), as mentioning Travel accidents only might not necessarily include this, or might require a higher insurance amount as these sports involves higher risk than normal leisure or business travel.